Code Name: Heero Yuy
by Catwho
Summary: Heero tries to find some answers regarding his past, only to learn that someone on Colony One desperately wanted to erase him from existence...
1. Midnight Message

Code Name: Heero Yuy

Code Name: Heero Yuy

Serious ficcish thing by Cat Who

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. I know that. Don't sue me, etc.

AC: 202

Heero stirred in the bed, unable to really sleep. Next to him, Relena was knocked out, oblivious to the world at large. She wasn't snoring, although he wouldn't have minded if she had been. The Vice Foreign Minister had come back from a ten day trip to the colonies last night, and had simply collapsed on her bed after Heero gave her a welcome-home kiss. He was beginning to worry she'd burn herself out at this rate.

He touched her nose gently before sliding out of the bed, yawning and stretching in his nightclothes. Ever since he'd moved in with Relena two years ago, he'd gotten into the habit of wearing regular pajamas, mostly because she insisted on it. More often than not they had ended up on the floor, unheeded, in those early days. Heero smiled slightly to himself at the memory. 

There was his laptop, drawing him in like a magnet. He turned it on, sighing as the power cells warmed up the backlit gel display. The soft glow of the monitor filled the room. Next to it, last night's cup of coffee beckoned as well, but it had been sitting out for quite some time, and as Heero suspected, the dregs at the bottom were ice cold. Not that he needed coffee anyway. It was probably the whole reason he couldn't sleep to begin with.

He logged on to the wireless network to check his email. Spam, spam, more spam, hmmm, note from Quatre, more spam... a vaguely familiar return address caught his attention. He frowned as he wracked his memory for the name... Derrick Inverness? Who was...? Suddenly, he remembered, and quickly opened the email, his heart beating unexplainably faster. 

_Mr. Yuy:_

_Remember that hypnosis session we had with Dr. Myers last month? One of the leads we uncovered may have panned out. Odin Lowe checked into a hotel on Colony Four once under the name of Hiroshi Yuy. It's too much of a coincidence for me. Let me know when you can get in touch so we can investigate this further."_

_Sincerely,  
Derrick Inverness  
PI_

_PS: Delete this email after you've read it._

Heero hesitated before deleting the email. After nearly a year of exhaustive investigation... a lead had finally turned out something. He'd undergone hypnosis last month to comb his childhood memory for anything, any fragment that might help him discover his origins. Although he didn't remember any of it, there were hours of recordings of him, droning out places they'd visited, people Odin Lowe had killed...

Wait a minute. He hadn't started going by the name Yuy until after Odin Lowe had died. Before then, he'd usually been called Odin Lowe Jr. when he needed a name... why in the world did Odin use the name Yuy to check into a hotel? Inverness was right. It was too much of a coincidence. 

He sent a quick reply to Inverness, saying he'd meet him tomorrow evening it that was convenient. It was probably just that, a coincidence... after all, Yuy was a fairly common name, and Odin had used whatever name and tax number combination he could get his hands on to stay undercover. But Heero had a gut feeling. They were onto something. He knew it.


	2. Hiroshi and Akima Yuy

Code Name: Heero Yuy

Code Name: Heero Yuy (Part II)

Serious ficcish thing by Cat Who

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. I know that. Don't sue me, etc.

Heero skulked in the shadows behind the Romanov Hotel in Prague, a few hours drive from the Sank Capital. Relena was already off to yet another colony meeting, so he hadn't even told her he was going anywhere. He didn't want her to worry about him. After all, technically he was just laying low with her in case the world ever needed the Perfect Soldier again. Technically, officially, he didn't even exist.

But he wanted to change all that. Last year he'd been inspired by Duo going on a genetic geneology quest and finding his roots in historic Savannah Georgia on Earth. Whereas Duo's search had been greatly simplified by the accurate records kept by the Catholic churches in Savannah, Heero was not so fortunate. Not even DNA matching had brought any results. He'd hired Inverness when he realized there was nothing more he could do, himself. Inverness was the man who'd assisted Duo in uncovering his family there. 

Overhead the dim alley light flickered. Heero hated clandestine meetings like this, but Inverness preferred to work in the shadows. The man did good work; Heero would have never thought of undergoing hypnosis to trace his life as far back as he could remember. Sadly, his first memories were of Odin Lowe. 

No parents. No family. No history. It was as if he'd simply sprung into being, the mythological Perfect Soldier popping out of Odin Lowe's head like some masculine Athena. Not that Lowe had been a bad surrogate parent, as far as parents could go. He'd taught him to defend himself and how to use a gun as soon as he could hold one.

But why did Odin Lowe take care of him? He could have just dumped him in an orphanage, and been rid of him... he certainly wasn't his genetic father. Lowe had been _gaijin_ and Heero was clearly Japanese. No, something must have happened... for some reason, Lowe had wanted to take care of him.

_Trust your feelings. _

Heero still followed that advice. When all else failed, the human instinct had ways of detecting patterns that the conscious mind missed. Instincts had kept mankind alive for thousands of years. They had kept Heero alive for twenty two.

"Yuy." Inverness appeared quietly, without fanfare. Heero nodded in response. The private investigator wore a black trenchcoat, an oversized black hat, and a long black scarf wrapped around so that it obscured most of his features. Inverness had a flair for the dramatic, because, as he put it, people don't acknowledge people who seem to want to be acknowledged. By dressing up as a mockery of himself, people took him less seriously, something that worked to his advantage more often than not.

"Who was Hiroshi Yuy?" Heero asked, cutting to the chase. 

"We don't know that yet. All his records were erased. Every single last one."

Heero raised one eyebrow. Many records had been lost during the war...after all, data safety was the least of worries when there are bombs falling round you, especially for unimportant records like shopping receipts. Yet for all the records to be gone from every database meant that someone had deliberately gone through and pulled them.

"Are there any left at all, do you think?"

"The closed International Genetics Database may have some information on him. However, no outsiders are allowed in there at all. I don't think even your pretty girlfriend can legally get you into there."

Heero ignored the comment about Relena. "I can hack into anything. Just give me the IP address and watch me."

Inverness shook his head. "The IGD is all hardcopy. You'll have to break into it. And the security there is pretty tight."

Heero sighed and closed his eyes. "I can probably break into anything as well. Okay, where is it, and what am I looking for?"

"They'll have his name, tax number, and genetic information on file there. More importantly, they'll have his family history. Chances are, you'll find nothing important there, but you did say you wanted to investigate all leads."

Heero nodded. 

"Write it all down on pen and paper. Don't risk breaking into the network... if you're caught in there, I don't know who the hell you are, and neither will any of your friends. Bring me the information. We'll meet again later this week. The IGD is a huge building in Sydney, Australia, a few blocks down from the opera house. You won't miss it. Any other questions?"

Heero grimaced. Here we go again...

"Mission accepted."

Inverness blended into the shadows again, and was gone. Heero reflected on what kind of life a PI had to lead...always digging around in everyone else's business, skulking around in alleys -- of course, getting paid a bundle to do so. Hmmm. Perhaps a viable career option for an ex-soldier who probably shouldn't even exist.

Several days later Heero found himself outside the IGD in Sydney. He waited until five in the morning before beginning his break-in plan. The IGD was indeed an imposing building, at least ten stories tall; solid, gray, businesslike brick and mirrored glass, surrounded by a five meter high security fence. First things first. He spray a light non-aerosol mist across the fence, noting where the security lasers were. Two of them...good. He placed four tiny pocket mirrors on the fence, about a meter apart, so that the lasers reflected onto themselves and wouldn't be set off. Next, sonic alarms...he hung a long string between the to laser ones. A string wouldn't set the alarms off, hopefully. A telltale twitch at the end let him know where the sonic alarm was. 

He repacked his supplies efficiently on his black divers suit, very aware of the fact that if he were caught here, it would not only be extremely embarrassing for Relena, but it could severely hurt her career as well. He didn't want that to happen to her, so he couldn't get caught, simple as that.

Picking his way carefully over the three alarms, easily finding toe-holds even through the thin leather gloves, he swung himself over the barbed wire on top and landed on the grassy ground with a soft thud, rolling to minimize the impact. He lay very quiet for a few seconds -- the patch of wall he'd picked to scale was a good hundred meters away from the gate, and he'd dropped a mild sleeping capsule in the guardhouse for good measure, but one could never be too careful. When no one came shouting at him for a few minutes, he picked himself up and continued on his way. 

He found a nice, unassuming side door, and swiped a bacterial marker over the numbers on the keypad. Three, five, and six all glowed neon green for a few seconds before fading again. That was all he needed to know. Within a few brief moments he'd disabled the alarm, picked the tumblers, and found himself in a low corridor leading to the heart of the building. So far, so good.

He turned on a flashlight. There would have to be a fire map on every floor, something that is very useful to spies and assassins. It wasn't long before he'd found one near what had to have been the main lobby. Even better, it was electronic, and displayed the room name for every room one the floor. Stairways were there; Y-Z storage was on the 9th floor. He hoped that Y-Z storage meant the genetic storage by surname.

Up eight flights of stairs, picking the locks for the two fire doors. Heero snorted. That was just dangerous. The whole point of fire doors was that they be always open so that people could escape a fire. He wasn't even winded when he crept into the eighth floor hallway. 

Y-Z storage was a large room of thousands of file cabinets. Heero reverently tiptoed through them, searching for the Yu section. The surname Yuy occupied forty whole drawers. Sighing, Heero picked the simple key locks on Yuy, He-Ho. Idly, he checked for information on his own code name. As he'd suspected, all of the Heero Yuy's were missing. Not that he'd ever donated blood or anything. Kind of nice to know that even this important database didn't officially know he existed. But there were about a hundred Hiroshi Yuys on file, with key genome markers and immediate family information displayed on onion paper to minimize space. Heero carefully searched through, looking for the tax number he'd received from Inverness. There it was...

Hardly daring to breathe, Heero pulled out the index card. Of course he was disappointed. The genetic information had been entirely blacked out, as had been the date of birth, all immediate family information, and even his blood type. Heero wanted to howl in rage at the thoroughness of the censors. Obviously, Hiroshi Yuy _had_ been important. But the censor had been sloppy, and Heero could just make out the name of the person listed as "spouse." Hiroshi Yuy's wife had been named Akima.

Well, the card was useless. But maybe Akima Yuy's would be in better shape. He returned Hiroshi's card, and closed and relocked the drawer before going to the Yuy, A-Ai. Akima Yuy's filed was also censored heavily. However, this card listed a son. There was no date of birth, no blood type, nothing that the censors hadn't blacked out, but it did give his place of birth...Nemuro Memorial Hospital on Colony One. 

He carefully returned her card, and existed the building, still in full stealth even though his head was swirling with disturbing thoughts. _A son born on colony one. _It was probably all just coincidence; Odin Lowe had had literally hundreds of alias, and Yuy was a common name in all its romanaji spellings... even so, Heero knew they were onto something big, even if it wasn't his family. Someone had wanted Hiroshi Yuy and all his family erased from the face of the earth. 


	3. Nemuro Memorial Hospital

Code Name: Heero Yuy

Code Name: Heero Yuy (Part III)

Serious ficcish thing by Cat Who

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. I know that. Don't sue me, etc.

Nenmuro Memorial Hospital, Colony One. Heero breathed in the friendly recycled air of his old home. It was funny, really; Colony One wasn't someplace he'd ever expected to miss, but now that he was here, he realized that he'd been almost homesick for the slightly off gravity and breathtaking views of stars through the Side walls. 

The streets of Colony One were no longer so lonely. People had begun to rebuild their lives, and buildings once shattered by explosions had either been replaced or torn down. The very face of the cities within the Sides of the Colony had changed, as well. Gone were the war-orphans in the streets. Many of them had grown up, and moved on with life, and the rest had somehow found a home withing the wreckage that was civilization.

Had he found a home? Sure, he had a place to stay, a woman who loved him desperately despite his flaws, and dear friends who could and had died for him. But part of him still felt like a wanderer, lost in the aftermath of his own violent youth. His hands, so stained with blood, could never be washed clean. All he could do was vow never to kill again, and continue on with his life...

The hospital was a small, squat building, not much more than a clinic, really, deep in the heart of the Japanese section of Colony One. He walked inside the doors in broad daylight. Unlike the IGD, the records at this hospital were open to him, thanks to his somewhat unofficial affiliation with the Preventors. And, in an odd way, after the Barton war, he'd become something of a hero to the people of Colony One. Heero the hero. He smiled to himself. It had a nice ring to it.

Heero walked up to the main desk, where a plump secretary glanced up from her work, her piggish eyes squinting through owl-rimmed glasses. 

"Can I help you?" she asked in an annoyed voice. Heero took a calming breath. No reason to be hostile to the only people who could help him.

"I'm looking for someone. Someone who was born here."

"What year?"

"I don't know."

"What name?"

"I don't know."

The secretary frowned at him. "Honey, you know I can't just let you flip through all our records until you see one you like. Do you at least have the parent's names?"

"Yuy, Akima and Hiroshi."

Something about the names caused the secretary to pause. "Akima and Hiroshi Yuy? You mean, Akima Yuy, the old Heero Yuy's sister?"

Heero felt the blood drain from his face. So THAT was the connection. He managed to keep his expression calm. "Yes. I want to see the records for their child."

The secretary frowned again. "What relation are you to them?"

"I don't know." Heero grimaced. This was going just _great_ so far...

"Look, hon, you're gonna have to have better answers than that before I let ya see the records. I mean, we can't just let...oh!" Heero had taken out his Preventor's ID card. Never mind that it had expired last year. The impact -- and the name -- were enough.

"The new Heero Yuy! Well, why didn't you say so?" The secretary puffed up importantly, something Heero felt she didn't really need to do to make a -- large impression. "Yuriko, would you please come up and watch the front desk for a moment?" she said into a callbox. She stood up and beckoned to Heero, and led the way into the inner sanctum of hospital records department.

"A lot of the files were destroyed in a fire during the war. Fortunately, I think the Y section survived intact." Above their heads, three meter tall shelves lined with thousands of records loomed imposingly, their bulging folders bright against the cool gray of their metal cages. An occasional desk was tucked among the rows, and data entry clerks were hard at work, converting the records to the latest storage format. Heero took it all in with wide eyes...so this is how civilian hospitals worked, eh?

"Ah...here we are. Akima Yuy. I remember her. She died during childbirth, you know."

Heero felt a icy vise close around his heart. No, he hadn't known.

"Her last request was to name their son after his uncle, your namesake, I believe. Her husband did so, and was so overcome with grief at the loss of his wife that he commited sepuko. He knew they shouldn't had tried natural childbirth in space, and he blamed himself for her death. It was all over the news when it happened, about twenty ought years ago. Ah, here's the record."

Heero tried to control his sense of anticipation as she opened the records. Therein would like the secret of Akima Yuy's son, the nephew of the real Heero Yuy. 

"What the..." the secretary whispered as she opened the records.

Gone. All of them were gone. Ripped out from the roots, the green folder still containing shredded fragments of the carbon copies...but the files on Akima Yuy were no longer there.

"Damn," Heero whispered to himself.

"I don't understand. No one should have access to this backroom without permission. Why would someone do this?"

Heero shook his head. "They're trying to erase her from history, just like they all but erased Heero Yuy from history. Tell me, you were here when she had that child, weren't you?"

The secretary nodded. "I've been here since before the assasination of Heero Yuy. He was taken to this hospital, to be treated, but he'd been shot through the heart. Damn the man who did that to him. Damn him for all eternity." The plump secretary trembled in indignation, her black coif bobbing in the combs that held it fast.

Heero shook his head. "The man who killed Heero Yuy served his penance for the rest of his life. Even if he is in hell, he suffered greatly for what he had done..." Heero had known that Odin had killed Yuy long ago. Ironic, really, that his adopted son had taken on the code name of the most important figure he'd assasinated.

"Anyway, is there anyplace I might be able to find information on Akima Yuy? It's important...to me."

The secretary thought for a few moments. "You may want to try the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, on Earth. Akima was a classic example of space-birth complications, and they're the ones who handled her autopsy."

Another lead, then. "Thank you very much," Heero said, with as formal a bow as he could muster. "You have helped me more than you can imagine."

The secretary blushed. "You're very welcome, Mr. Yuy." She tried to bow back, but her bulk made the logistics of such a move difficult. "Oh, Mr. Yuy, before you go, may I ask you one question in return?"

Heero paused. He'd already started to walk towards the door, eager to continue his quest. Akima Yuy was the key to the whole mystery, he was sure. "Yes?"

"Can I....can I have your autograph?"

If Heero were capable of a facefault, he would have done so. The plump secretary looked so hopeful, so meek and supplicant. But since facefaulting was more along Duo's style, Heero did what he himself did best instead.

"Hnn."


	4. Betrayal at the CDC

Code Name: Heero Yuy

Code Name: Heero Yuy (Part IV)

Serious ficcish thing by Cat Who

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. I know that. Don't sue me, etc.

Atlanta, Georgia, was not a pleasant place, even before the colonies. The city had suffered massive sprawl, its metropolitan area stretching for hundreds of miles around it, spilling into suburbs and taking over towns around it until it had spread like so much kudzu over most of the northwest corner of the state. The only person who hated Atlanta more than Heero was Relena, and even then their hatred of the city was probably an even match. 

The Center for Disease Control was even more tightly secured than the IGD had been. Heero couldn't break into it outright, but there was more than one way to skin a cat.

First, he hacked into the genetics systems for the University of Georgia, acquiring several identities in the process. At least he could do that from outside of the bloated mess that was Atlanta. On his laptop, in a hotel in Athens, he composed a simple little program in C++, that good old ancient programming language, that allowed him to slip on the virtual identities of the university like a second skin. A quick reroute through the University labs, making sure to trigger the firewalls so that no one could trace it back to his IP, and he was ready to tackle the CDC.

The identities he had picked up were all research proffessors who were well known and respected. Hopefully one would have remote access to the files in the CDC. 

He tried one after the other, making sure to change his IP address radically each time, and coming from different backbone servers all over the continent so as not to set off the alarms, but it was to no avail; apparently, the CDC didn't even allow genetics proffessors access to the most personal files remotely. There was always plan B then.

He broke into the University's genetics building, a historic DNA-shape affair that had been built way before the Colonies. He found the IDs that some genetics proffessor had carelessly left in his office, and copied the vital information from it, taking a digital image of himself with a tiny camera, then breaking into the University's photography lab. He was now suddenly a genetics proffessor -- the nametag, complete with his photograph, said so. It also said his name was Nehal Patel. Heero hoped that whomever was on guard duty at the CDC wouldn't question why a Japanese man had an Indian name.

The CDC used fingerprints and retinal scans. Copying those would be far more difficult, so Heero simply packed a silencer. It temorarily rerouted eletronics in its immediate area, disabling them and allowing him to fool pretty much any alarm with the right programming. An alarm that was muted couldn't go off. The device was so illegal that Heero almost regretted having to use it. He made a note to destroy it afterward...it made breaking in almost too easy.

The CDC in Atlanta sprawled much like the bloated city around it, stretching high into the air and across several city blocks. The outer guard let him in when he flashed his newly acquired University ID, not even bothering to check the name. So far, so good. White lab coat flapping in the breeze, he wandered through the quadrangle that acted as a lawn, keeping himself as calm as possible. The files on Akima Yuy would hopefully uncover more leads, if not answers.

Heero walked up to the second gate of the CDC. The silencer did its job well, sending all the right signals to the computer so that it believed it had recieved the all clear from the central database. Heero gave a curt, businesslike nod to the second guard, and entered the labyrinth of the Center for Disease Control. 

Long, echoing hallways are hard to stay inconspicuous in, Heero thought idly. The trick is to act like you belong, like you know exactly where you are going. The fire maps helped him here as well; although he couldn't get more than a passing glance at the first one he saw, the second one was in a nice, empty corner, and he studied it for quite some time. First, disable the cameras. The security room would be...there.

No need to blow anything up. He simply set the silence outside the door, increased its range, and it go to work. The handy little thing would keep the cameras looping as long as he left it there.

Now, he was free to roam at leisure. It didn't take him long to find an emtpy computer room, and he sat down, cracking his knuckles in preparation for some evil hackery. 

There it was -- fourth floor, standard records, Records Building. Damnit. He'd have to get into another building on the compound. He casually erased all traces of his break-in, and strode out of the room, keeping his expression calm and businesslike. He picked up his silencer, went out the back door, and walked across the quadrangle to the Records Building, a squat although large edifice. The security was tighter there. 

"Nehal...Patel?" the guard said, disbelieving.

"I'm one quarter on my dad's side," Heero said, shrugging. "No one believes its my name."

The guard looked at him suspiciously as he went through the hand and retinal scanner. These ones took longer, and Heero's hear beat faster for a few seconds, but he was cleared nonetheless. Whew. It had been easier when he was just a Gundam Pilot. Set off a few explosives, and do your job while everyone was distracted. Being a civilian spy was a helluva lot harder.

Up the elevator to the fourth floor. The Y-Z room here was much like that of the IGD; rows upon rows of files, nearly sorted in alphabetical order, but his search was also simplified by the fact that gene files, like Akima's, were also sorted by disease.

He picked the lock on the cryo-file cabinet, hardly daring to breathe. When he found the files for Yuy Akima, wife of Yuy Hiroshi, he closed his eyes in relief. Jackpot. There was even a DNA sample in a small vial.

And he stood there and read, and nearly wanted to weep. He knew the story already, but the writer at the CDC had put in human touches -- the obituaries, the articles.

Akima Yuy, only sister of Heero Yuy, had tried for many years to conceive naturally in space, but she and her husband had failed. She had considered the test-tube alternative, but her husband believed they could conceive on their own. Five years after the death of Heero Yuy, Akima gave birth to a healthy baby boy. The birth cost her her life. Shortly after, Hiroshi Yuy commited seppuku. No one knew what happened to the child. There was even a picture in this file; it showed Hiroshi Yuy and Akima Yuy hugging each other at the funeral for her brother on Colony One. Heero stared. He'd seen Hiroshi Yuy before. He knew it. But how? The man had been dead for twenty two years.

He quietly pulled the files and was in the process of putting them into his pockets when he felt the familiar, cool sensation of a gun pressed into his back.

"Drop them," a familiar voice said.

Heero turned around, his eyes wide with shock. Detective Inverness motioned with the gun for Heero to put down the files. "I said drop them."

Every insinct in Heero screamed at him to fight and run away, but he was a civilian now. Reluctantly, he set the files down, and raised his hands in submission.

"Why, Inverness?" Heero was hurt. The man had helped Duo so much; why betray him now that he was so close to his goal? 

Inverness said nothing, but he released the safety on his gun. "I don't know you," he said, and then Heero remembered -- Inverness would never admit he knew him if he got caught.

Cursing all the while, Heero walked out of the records room in handcuffs, mourning the loss of his files and his last hope of finding out who Hiroshi Yuy was.


	5. That Which We Call A Rose

Code Name: Heero Yuy

Code Name: Heero Yuy (Part V)

Serious ficcish thing by Cat Who

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. I know that. Don't sue me, etc.

Well, Yuy, you've really done it this time.

The jail cell was clean and comfortable -- he'd been in much worse in his lifetime. Contrary to popular belief, most modern jails weren't nasty dungeon-like affairs with dripping water and rat skeletons. They were, like this one in Atlanta, rather new and well-kept, smelling less of urine and more of lemon cleaner. But they were always dim. The dimmer the cell, the more fear the occupant would feel.

"Heero!" a familiar voice cried. Oh, damn, it was Relena. She'd be hurt by this far more than he would.

He heard the patter of her feet, and saw her tear around the corner, skidding to a halt in front of his cell. She was wearing a pretty navy powersuit, one that showed off her legs to their best advantage. Heero made himself steer away from carnal thoughts, and he focused on looking as cool as he could in his rather embarassing situation.

"Heero, they're saying you broke into the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta!"

"I did."

"I can't believe they would accuse you of such a ridiculous -- what?"

"I said, I did."

"But why, Heero?" she cried.

Heero sighed. He couldn't explain it all to her, not yet. He closed his eyes, unable to look at her face. He'd wanted to share his secret to her after he'd solved it all himself. Right now he'd gone off on a tangent; he hadn't even been searching for his family, but for that of a man who'd been dead for twenty seven years.

"Heero." Her voice was soft, and understanding. "I shouldn't have asked that. But I'd have been able to get you in there for whatever reason, I'm sure..." she trailed off. "I'll wait until you're ready to tell me, Heero. I"ll wait for you." 

Heero was still unable to look at her, but he could feel her love reflecting off him, even with the jail bars separating them. Connections. There was a connection between them, call it love, call it friendship, call it kindred souls. They were connected by the heart.

Just as there was a connection between him and the real Heero Yuy beyond their names.

An officer came and escorted Relena off to the side, no doubt haggling over bail and potential jail terms for breaking into the CDC. A third set of footsteps approached his cell. Heero glanced up again, and was very surprised at who he saw.

Inverness.

"What do you want?" he asked dully. The PI was back into his normal outfit -- black trenchcoat, heavy scarf, a large broadbrimmed hat so that only his eyes shone amidst the darkness.

"I wanted to apologize," Inverness said in a low voice.

"Save your breath," Heero snorted, staring at the wall.

"I'm serious, Yuy. Even a PI has to have a day job, and this one gives me access to some very handy information. It's both our rotten luck that you chose to break into the CDC during my shift -- the guard at the gate asked me to keep an eye on you. Once I saw you with the files, I had to make a move, or I'd be in trouble."

Heero said nothing.

"The good news is that Relena is passing around a lot of money to keep this quiet, and I've pulled a few strings as well. No one outside of the CDC and the Atlanta sherriff's department should ever hear about any of it."

Heero breathed a mental sigh of relief. He'd never forgive himself if Relena's career was harmed due to his stupidity.

"Are you going to say anything at all?"

After a moment of thought, Heero spoke. "Fuck you."

Inverness laughed then, a grear rolling laugh that escaped from his black mantle in waves, so that the clothing about him shook. Heero remembered Trowa laughing in much the same way, after he'd pretty much brought Heero back from the dead all those years ago. It was a laughter that released all the tension, all the fear, and all the anxiety from a person. Heero felt himself smile. It was going to be all right, after all.

***

"Are you all right, Heero? They didn't beat you or anything?"

He and Relena were walking arm in arm toward her private jet, which had carried her from the Sank Palace in northern Europe to Atlanta the instant she'd heard of his arrest. She clutched a briefcase in her other hand, which Heero suspected had a lot less cash in it than it had had a few hours earlier.

"No, Relena, they didn't beat me. The war is over. They don't beat people in jails anymore." As smart as Relena was, she'd been more than a little naive during the war. Truth be told, he hadn't been abused too much, even in the clutches of the various different factions. War was war, but even so, people were people. Only truly sadistic men liked to torture their defeated enemies for anything more than just information.

"Well, that's good. I'm glad." She squeezed his arm, then remembered something. "Oh, by the way, that funny man in black handed me a package that he said was for you."

Heero stopped dead in his tracks, dropped her arm, and stared at Relena. "A package?" Could Inverness have really...?

Relena nodded, and dug through her briefcase, producing a manila envelope taped firmly over the ends. "What's in it?"

"What I broke into the CDC for," Heero said, his voice cracking with emotion.

"What you..." Relena gazed at the envelope, unable to tear her eyes away from the seductive tan sleeve. 

His fingers trembling, Heero opened it, right there outside the CDC, their plane only a few feet away. The news article with the photograph of Hiroshi Yuy was right on top.

"Why, it's you!" Relena exclaimed, pointing to Hiroshi Yuy. "But who are all these other people?"

It's...me?

"Oh my God."

"What Heero?"

"It _is_ me. No, no, it's not me. It's...it's my father."

"Heero...?"

"Come on," he said, carefully slipping the picture back into the envelope and grabbing her hand. "We've got to go see Sally Po." Inverness had put DNA sample of Akima Yuy in the envelope as well, but it would only prove what he now knew. 

****

"It's a match, all right," Sally Po said in the Preventer's Headquarters, in Luxembourg, as she held up two small squares of genetic marker paper. Heero and Relena had flown directly there from Atlanta, and coerced Sally into running a DNA analysis of Heero and Akima Yuy. "There's no doubt about it. She was either your mother, or someone else just as close."

Heero was sitting against the lab wall, staring at the ceiling, still in shock over his revelation. "It all makes so much sense now," he murmered, half to himself.

"What does, Heero?" Relena asked, concern rippling through her voice. "I still don't understand what's going on."

"I'm Heero Yuy's nephew."

"What?" Sally Po dropped her clipboard, she was so surprised. 

"I'm the son of Hiroshi and Akima Yuy. Akima Yuy was Heero Yuy's sister. She died giving birth to a child -- to me -- on Colony One."

"But..." Relena trailed off. "You said you were raised by Odin Lowe."

"I was. Odin Lowe killed my uncle. He must have felt guilty for taking away the only family I would have had left before I even had a chance to meet him... he raised me as his own son, instead..." Heero was not surprised to feel tears coursing down his cheeks. Relena, although still naive in many ways, knew that what he needed most at the moment was a hug.

"I'm glad," she whispered as he sobbed onto her shoulder. "I'm glad you've found your family."

"And all this time I thought it was just a code name," Heero said, laughing through his tears. "It's my real name. I finally have a real name..."

Sally quietly exited the lab, leaving the precious records of Heero's mother on the table, so that they could pick them up later.

Heero's tears eventually ran dry, and he sadly brushed at the shoulder of her power suit. "I'm sorry, Relena. I cried all over your blazer."

Relena smiled back. "It's okay. I'm just glad you're okay. Come on, Heero. Let's go home." She held out her hand, and he gratefully took it.

I'm no longer a stranger, Heero thought numbly as the walked out to the airfield behind the Headquarters. I'm finally a real person. I've got an identity. And yet, I don't feel all that different. I'm still _me. _Heero Yuy. The Perfect Soldier. 

And deep down, Heero suddenly realized that Doctor J had known, too, somehow. And Heero smiled to himself. Code name, Heero Yuy, indeed.

The end!

C&C always appreciated.


End file.
